FRANKEN: IT WILL BE BETTER FOR WOMEN IF HE STAYS IN PUBLIC LIFE

The forced resignation of Al Franken doesn’t make very much sense for anybody except those who seek the reversal of women’s progress. OK, if a progressive woman is appointed in his place, one that stands a good chance of getting re-elected, that might be a reasonable trade-off. Certainly Franken’s thoughtless, unwelcome advances need to be acknowledged and rebuked. But—if it’s possible to hold two things in mind at the same time—what I understand to be his actual work supporting women’s equality also needs to be acknowledged. The two contradictory-seeming factors need to be weighed and balanced. Will women (and hence society in general) be better off with him gone? I don’t think so. He should be admonished—has of course already been admonished—and kept on and valued as otherwise one of the good guys.

Trump and Roy Moore and other conservative abusers of women, most of whom seem to be getting away with it, are pledged as a basic tenet of their politics to fight what a majority of women say they want. (Starting with the repeal of Roe v Wade.) Getting rid of Franken is only helping them make good on their promises.

Shouldn’t Democratic women—including those to whom he made unwelcome advances– be polled as to whether they want to see Franken punished by banishment from public life?

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In the spirit of full disclosure: this blog is about everything. Yes, I know, that sounds both irresponsibly noncommital and ridiculously ambitious, but it’s not really. “About everything” in the sense that it’s about life. Call it an ongoing inquiry into how life works, how to live. My version of what I regard as everyone’s basic project, required by living, the old experiment-of-one.